Wednesday, December 05, 2007

Two boys are bowling in their living room. They cheer when they make a strike and laugh when the ball rolls into the gutter. While one is taking his turn, the other looks ready to snatch the white remote control device from his hand.

I can't tell whether their happiness comes from: (1)knocking down a respectable number of pins, (2) WiiTM ownership, (3) the novelty of the device and/or the specific game, (3) getting it for free, or (4) an awareness of being watched.

Rather than pointing out the limits of the boundary between entertainment and advertising, it is one more sign of how permeable that line has already become. I'm convinced this is only the beginning. While it feels hollow, it also feels like I'm missing out on something fun. The stronger feeling defines me as being inside or outside the market -- for the show and for the product.

Their mother abandons her dirty dishes to investigate the enthusiasm. After the gods closed the door early on the development of her height, they opened a million virtual windows into homes across the country. She tells them she once played on a league, but the idea of a real bowling alley, its smoke-filled air laced with rental shoe disinfectant, sounds as inconvenient as relying on a dull pencil to manually track the results of one turn based on the outcome of the next.

"The primary focus of this path of choosing wisely...is learning to stay present. Pausing very briefly, frequently throughout the day, is an almost effortless way to do this. For just a few seconds we can be right here. Meditation is another way to train in learning to stay or...learning to come back, to return to the present over and over again."

Salubrion Enso Clock

"In Zen Buddhist painting, ensō symbolizes a moment when the mind is free to simply let the body-spirit create. The brushed ink of the circle is usually done on silk or rice paper in one movement and there is no possibility of modification: it shows the expressive movement of the spirit at that time."